UNIFY Group takes exclusivity to buy Sciences et Avenir and La Recherche

UNIFY Group said on 10 September that it has been granted exclusivity to buy two French science magazines from LVMH. The titles are Sciences et Avenir, a monthly, and La Recherche, a quarterly. The publisher did not give a price.

UNIFY Group is the company formerly known as Reworld Media. It buys magazine brands and runs them with a small newsroom and a large digital operation. The deal would also cover the websites of both titles and their activities outside publishing.

Sciences et Avenir sells 168,610 paid copies in France

UNIFY puts the print readership of Sciences et Avenir at about 2 million people. The site draws more than 1.2 million unique visitors a month. The title’s social accounts hold 2.4 million followers. Paid circulation in France is 168,610 copies.

La Recherche is much smaller. It sells to researchers and academics and has more than 10,000 subscribers. All of these figures come from UNIFY Group.

UNIFY Group already publishes Science et Vie

The buyer owns Science et Vie, another French science monthly. If the deal closes, three well known French science titles sit with one publisher. A media buyer who wants a science audience in France would then negotiate with one seller for most of it.

Magazines elsewhere have taken the other route out of the same squeeze. The Saturday Evening Post stopped printing after 205 years. Buying a title is one answer. Closing it is the other.

French publishers are also watching what AI search does to their traffic, and the picture is not the same everywhere. Le Monde says it sees no audience drop from AI Overviews, while German online shops have lost organic visibility. Some publishers are paying to get readers back: US publishers put 113 million dollars into paid search in July.

Works councils must be consulted before signing

Exclusivity is not a done deal. French law requires the employee representative bodies at both titles to be informed and consulted first. Only after that can the two sides sign.

What UNIFY does with the two newsrooms after that consultation is the open question. Nothing in the announcement says whether Sciences et Avenir and La Recherche keep their own staff or move in with Science et Vie. The final agreement, due once the works councils have given their opinion, is where that answer turns up.